Posts Tagged ‘New Romantic

This is unquestionably and without a doubt the greatest album of all time. And the date I’m listening to this is… April 1! I have started my next project, reviewing my roommate’s records, which I have alphabetized, and so starting with ABC makes a lot of sense. I’ve never heard of ABC– most likely because this is the kind of English crap we’d get in the Spindizzy store where I worked when this came out (1985) (okay, we closed in 1983– but I bet their earlier records or singles came into the store) that Keith would put on for about 25 seconds before removing and saying “Another one of THOSE bands.”

The album cover is actually MANY times worse than the music– it’s crappy even WAY beyond 80’s standards of ugliness. It looks like the kind of record they’d be giving away at the grocery store with a 72 serving container of new Peach Tang. There’s really no excuse for it. The sleeve contains unreadable lyrics– this was around when multiple “fonts” became available, so people would use ALL OF THEM.

The nice thing, though, is the band picture on the other side of the sleeve, with black and white photos of the band which oddly made me think of the Dandy Warhols. Which made me think, that’s what the Dandy Warhols are, a New Romantic revival band. “Duh,” I know– sorry, I mean it’s amazing I even know who the Dandy Warhols are, so un-hip am I– and it’s only because of that movie “DIG”– which could also be called, “The 60’s Vs. The 80’s.” Guess who the winner is.

Amway, the most interesting thing about this record, musically, is that someone is playing something called an “Emulator II” as well as “Fairlight C.M.I.” I have no idea what any of that means (unless it means bad music) but either one of those would make a good name for a movie, or maybe a television series.